The Dying Minutes Read online

  It was Jules Ranque, assistant warden at Les Baumettes prison on the other side of Marseilles. After the formalities, Ranque came straight to the point.

  ‘He wants to see you. Today.’

  There was no need for Ranque to give a name. Claude Dupont might have had more than a dozen clients currently confined in Les Baumettes but he knew exactly who wanted to see him.

  Prisoner LB67-426.

  Also known as L’Hippocampe. The Seahorse.

  Real name Pierre-Louis Lombard.

  Five years into a twenty-year stretch for the murder of a Marseilles hoodlum who’d had it coming. Lombard had done the State a service, but he’d still got the maximum. Sticking to his ‘not guilty’ plea hadn’t helped either. After two failed appeals, and no parole, he’d be in his eighties by the time he got out.

  Ten minutes later – apologies rendered to his wife; he’d likely be late for their lunch with the Rosseaux – Claude Dupont passed between the villa’s high wooden gates, drove up the winding lane towards La Rove and turned right onto the road leading down to L’Estaque. He would follow the coast, he decided, around Marseilles’ Vieux Port, along the swooping curves of the Corniche Président John F. Kennedy, and up Avenue du Prado. It would take him longer than driving cross-town, following Toutes Directions, but the sight of the sea on his right-hand side would calm him, distract him, give him time to prepare.

  In his professional capacity as a defending advocate in the Marseilles Judiciaire, Dupont had spent a considerable amount of his working life in prisons. But that didn’t mean he had ever grown used to them. At sixty-two years of age, after a lifetime of prison visits and as senior partner in his own law firm, Maître Dupont would normally have instructed one of his colleagues to make the trip he was making now. Pascal, the most junior, or Fabien who was eager for advancement in the firm. But Dupont knew that the summons he had received that bright and sunny Sunday morning demanded his presence, and his presence alone.

  As he turned off Boulevard Michelet, passing the Mazargues war cemetery en route for Morgiou, Dupont felt a deep weariness slide over him. It was always the same. In just a few moments he would exchange the sunlight and verve and vibrancy of this ancient sea port for the daunting, deadening compound of Les Baumettes – its brooding windowless walls, its tightly coiled wreaths of razor wire, and its grim watchtowers. He’d exchange, too, the sound of birdsong and rolling surf and traffic and distant ships’ horns for the jangle of keys, the echoing slam of steel doors and the dread finality of a turning lock. Even worse, the piney, salty scent of fresh air slicing through his open window would be replaced by the confined, foetid reek of sweat and food and fear that seemed to pulse through a prison like the flow of blood through veins, clinging to his clothes for hours after every visit. And if all that were not enough to ruin his day, there was that sudden, crowding proximity of evil, of lost hope, of brutal desperation, diluted out in the real world, but here distilled into a shoulder-hugging closeness.

  Up ahead, through the BMW’s windscreen, Claude Dupont saw the walls of Les Baumettes rise up on his left-hand side, shaded by a line of plane trees, walls and trees stretching the length of a broad dusty boulevard. There was word that renovations were due, that the sixteen hundred or more inmates might soon enjoy less cramped and savage surroundings. Dupont had heard the rumours, but he knew that any improvement in the prisoners’ living conditions was still a long way off. He parked the BMW in a patch of shifting leaf shadow, listened to the tick of the engine die, then got out, locked the car and walked to the gate.

  The assistant warden, Ranque, in a crumpled linen suit and tasselled loafers, was waiting for him at the entrance to the hospital wing. He was taller than Dupont, but where the lawyer was healthily tanned and scrupulously clean-shaven, Ranque was as pale as paper, his cheeks pock-marked, and his greying moustache in need of a trim.

  ‘He’s HIV-positive,’ Ranque told Dupont as they climbed the polished concrete stairs to the top-floor isolation ward. ‘Rape … Needles … Who knows? Enfin, he may have had it before he came to us. Whichever, it’s full-blown now. We’ve done as much as we can, but the doctor says he’s close. Not much longer.’ The assistant warden shrugged as they reached the landing, with a what-else-can-I-say wave of a hand. He pushed open the door and stood aside for Dupont to pass.

  The news of Lombard’s illness stunned the lawyer. When he’d been directed to the hospital wing, he’d imagined an injury – a fall, a fight, an operation maybe. Not this. He felt a chill sweep of apprehension as he stepped into the ward and Ranque let the door close behind him.

  It was eighteen months since Claude Dupont had last seen Lombard, in Marseilles’ Palais de Justice at the hearing for his second and final appeal. He’d been inside for three years by then and had held up well. A lifetime along the Marseilles docks would have given him all the skills he needed to survive in Les Baumettes. But now, not two years later, the man Dupont had known, the man Dupont had defended, and the man whose testimony he had believed in and whose freedom he had fought for, was dying.

  There were eight beds in the room – four a side, each set between barred and pebble-glassed windows – but only one of them was occupied. It was breathtakingly hot, stifling, in that high, narrow room, and as Dupont walked towards his client in the far corner the heat closed in on him, wrapped around him. Pulling up a chair, he felt the sweat slide down his back, sucking his silk shirt against his skin. He didn’t look at the man in the bed until he’d settled, but when finally he did, his breath caught and he reeled back. It was just as well his client’s eyes were closed, but the sudden scuff and creak of the chair brought them open.

  There were three reasons why Pierre-Louis Lombard was called The Seahorse.

  First, his place of work, his milieu. The city’s quays – every ship, every official, every permis, every bundle of contraband – all in his control; nothing happened along the Marseilles waterfront, from L’Estaque to Madrague, without The Seahorse having a hand in it.

  Second, there was his style of operation. He was quiet, discreet, blending into the background, hard to find, tricky to pin down. He worked alone, lived alone. No wife, no children. But when he lifted the phone, made a call, people scrambled to do his bidding – or faced the consequences.

  Finally, his eyes. The third and major reason for his nickname. In his late twenties a thyroid condition had resulted in exopthalmia – and once gentle, mischievous grey eyes now bulged wildly from their sockets, seeming to swivel in opposite directions as though run by two separate motors.

  Just like a seahorse – eyes everywhere.

  These same eyes – or, rather, one of them – settled now on Dupont.

  The lawyer managed a smile, nodded.

  ‘Pierre-Louis. A long time.’

  ‘It is good of you to come, Maître,’ whispered Lombard, working his lips painfully, scraping a dry tongue across them. The man’s skin was jaundiced, the colour of old ivory, dappled with raised black lesions that seemed to throb with malice, and his bare arms lay on the sheet like thin kindling.

  Dupont’s first reaction to these words was one of relief. Relief that he was able to hear them. If the voice had been any softer he would have had to draw closer to the bed. And he certainly didn’t want to do that. Instead he started to say something, he didn’t really know what, just something appropriate, suitably cheering.

  But Lombard slowly shook his head, as though he knew what was coming and had no time for idle talk.

  ‘I want you to know I was guilty,’ he began, without preamble. ‘I want you to know that I lied to you. It was me who sliced up that arab con.’ A small smile stitched itself across those peeling bluish lips.

  Dupont was taken aback, shocked out of any discomfort. Despite his client’s reputation he had believed every word the man had told him. Every detail, every nuance of his alibi, from the very start, in that holding cell at police headquarters on rue de l’Évêché.

  Now he felt a shiver of irritati
on at the deceit, at being taken in and played. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last, but given a choice he’d have preferred not to know. There was something damning in such a casual revelation, something that made him feel complicit in some way. And irritation swiftly sharpened into an unsettling anger, even if the man in front of him was dying.

  But Lombard wasn’t finished.

  With some considerable effort, enough for Dupont to wonder if he should help, Lombard pushed himself over on to his side, brought up his knees and squared his shoulders. A warm waft of stale bed breath fanned up from beneath the sheet and Dupont was hard pressed not to cover his nose or sit back. With eyes swivelling wildly, Lombard reached one arm slowly behind him, and seemed to rummage for something. He closed his eyes, pursed his lips and his brow creased with the strain. A moment later he rolled back, wiping his fingers on the sheet. He was holding something. Before Dupont could do anything about it, Lombard reached out and caught hold of the lawyer’s wrist.

  ‘My pension,’ he said, pressing a warm, rubbery package into Dupont’s unwilling hand and closing his fist around it. ‘I won’t be needing it now. But I’m sure you can have some fun and games with it. For me, you understand. Debts to settle. There’s people out there who owe me, and I want you to see they pay. It’s all there.’

  He squeezed Dupont’s hand then released him, sinking back on the bed, breath short and fast now.

  ‘As for the rest, Maître, consider it thanks for your professional services. Past and future.’

  And with that, Lombard closed his eyes and waved the lawyer away.

  Ranque was waiting for him on the landing.

  ‘A last request?’ he asked, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, blowing his nose, wiping it vigorously. ‘Was that what it was?’ He bundled up the handkerchief and pushed it away.

  ‘You could say,’ replied Dupont, feeling the small weight of the wrapped package in his trouser pocket, desperate to find somewhere to wash his hands.

  3

  ‘YOU CALL ME as soon as you get there, okay? Paris, and the island.’

  It was midday, a Sunday, in the Departures Hall at Marignane Airport outside Marseilles, and Claudine, Midou and Jacquot were heading towards passport control. Mother and daughter had checked in their cases, stopped for a final coffee with Jacquot, but now their flight had been called. It was time to part.

  ‘As soon as we arrive, I promise,’ said Claudine, turning to take his face in her hands, kissing him lightly on the mouth, the cheeks, then hugging him tight. She wore cream slacks, brown mocassins and a blue denim shirt that showed her tan, her long black hair caught in a mother-of-pearl clasp. When she was done with him, she stepped back, tears brimming, lips tight, and her daughter took her place.

  ‘I’ll take good care of her, just you see,’ said Midou, and slid her good right arm up round his neck, her left arm still in its plaster cast.

  If Jacquot had straightened his back, if he’d been able to straighten it without feeling wincing shafts of pain lance through his left hip, he could have lifted her off the floor.

  ‘I know you will,’ he said. ‘You have fun, you hear?’

  With sad smiles and nods and waves the two women turned away from him, and Jacquot marvelled at the passing of time, and regretted it. Just last week it had been days before their departure. Then a day. Then hours. And now … within a minute they would be gone from sight, and he would be alone. He watched them approach the passport desk, Midou first, then Claudine, nearly five months pregnant yet not a sign showing beyond a rounding swell to her belly, and just the faintest limp as she stepped forward, not as marked as Midou’s, all that was left from their ordeal in that basement in Pélissanne. Passports were handed over, examined with a brisk formality, returned with a nod, and then, with a final turn and wave and a blown kiss, the doors slid together and shut behind them.

  Now they really were gone.

  Turning on his stick Jacquot wheeled round and stumped off across the concourse, pausing one last time at the Departures board. Air France Flight 360, Marseilles to Paris Charles de Gaulle, departing 13:25. By the time he got home they would be flying somewhere above him. And this time tomorrow, when he woke in a lonely bed, they’d be landing at Pointe-à-Pitre on the island of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies.

  And it had all been his idea.

  They had come out of hospital within a week of each other, just a month earlier, Claudine first, with gauze bandaging taped over the entry and exit gunshot wound in her left thigh. They had given her a crutch, but by the time Midou was released a few days later, her shattered arm pinned in two places and coated in a plaster cast, the crutch had been discarded in favour of that light, tip-toe limp, as though she were about to start dancing.

  Jacquot had been the last of them to leave hospital, the 9x19mm bullet that he’d taken in his hip chipping away a splinter of pelvis, and tearing its way out of the back of his thigh. In addition to these not insignificant wounds were the raised pink scars from the two operations carried out to repair the damaged bone and to secure the shredded muscles.

  Age played its part too, Jacquot was sure. The two women were younger, fitter than he, and possibly their wounds were not as serious, or rather not as restricting as his. When Claudine came to collect him from the hospital, pushing his wheelchair to the waiting car, helping him into it, making him comfortable, no one would have believed that she had been shot as well. But for all the show, Jacquot could see the wounds still there, hidden behind her smile, the memory of those terrible moments when a killer’s gun had been levelled on her and her daughter, and a trigger pulled.

  And so he had suggested, without really thinking, after dinner one evening, that when Midou returned to Guadeloupe, maybe Claudine should accompany her, to assist on the journey and settle her daughter back into her island home.

  Claudine had been the first to object, but just as he saw the wounds behind her smile so, too, he could see the flash of excitement at such a proposal – spending more time with her daughter, visiting the island for the first time. Beaches, sunshine, the warm Caribbean …

  ‘But … but what about you?’ she’d asked. ‘How will you manage?’ Before adding, ‘And I’m pregnant. I can’t fly when I’m pregnant.’

  All of which he’d waved away, assuring her he’d be just fine, and that a five-month pregnancy shouldn’t hold her back; she should go.

  At which point Midou, equally delighted by the sudden prospect of having her mother come to stay, declared that she knew of women nearing full-term pregnancy taking flights. And the sun would do her good, a break … And the baby too.

  And so it had been settled.

  And now they were gone.

  At his own insistence.

  And he was on his own.

  Just as he’d known it would be, the millhouse outside Cavaillon was empty without them, silent, just the sense of them there, their softening fragance, a dim memory of their voices, soft echoes reaching down the hallways, on the stairs, in their rooms, as Jacquot made a slow and painful journey round the house.

  Alone.

  Tut-tutting at his melancholy, he went to the salon, poured himself a shot of Calva and retired to the kitchen, losing himself in the preparation of a late lunch. The last of a duck rillettes, some slices of country sausage, a bowl of olives, a length of warm baguette. A bottle of Fleurie. Some cheese.

  An hour later he was loading the dishwasher, stooping over the racks like an old man, when the phone rang.

  He checked the time. They’d be there by now. Paris.

  He picked up the wall-mounted kitchen extension.

  ‘So you got there?’

  ‘I got where?’ The voice was not Claudine’s nor Midou’s. It was Jean-Pierre Salette on the end of the line, the old harbour master in Marseilles, just as gruff and throaty as ever.

  ‘I thought you were Claudine. I was expecting a call from her.’

  ‘Alors, you’ll have to m
ake do with me. Why? Where is she?’

  Jacquot told him about the trip to Guadeloupe.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Salette. ‘Just what was needed. Because there’s a lady I’d like you to meet.’

  4

  IT WAS LATE that same Sunday when Francine Dupont finally switched off the television and prepared for bed. She came out on to the terrace, kissed the top of her husband’s head and told him not to stay up too late. He’d been out there an hour now, taken a thin cheroot and glass of cognac with him, waiting impatiently for just this moment. He gave a little shiver, starting to feel the chill out there on the terrace, and assured her he would be up presently, listening to her slippers slap across the tiles and up the stairs. He waited ten more minutes, watching the bats flicker past the stars, listening to a distant surf crash against the rocks below the villa, the night air heavy with the damp salt scent of the sea, as strong as the smoke from his cigar. Then he went to the garage and opened the boot of the BMW.

  The hold-all Dupont had picked up from a long-term left-luggage locker off the main concourse of the Gare Saint-Charles was just as weighty as he remembered. At the station he’d found a trolley to get it to his car, but now there was no such convenience. Grunting with the effort, he hauled the bag from his car and dragged it through the house, two-handed, stooped over, kicking aside any rug to move it more easily over the tiles. At the railway station, anxious not to be too late for their lunch with the Rosseaux, he’d resisted the temptation to examine the contents. Now, after locking the study door and pulling the case to his desk, Dupont slipped the catches, worked the zipper and looked inside.

  The first thing he saw was the gold. A dull yellow glimmer at the bottom of the case. Two long bars. They were loosely wrapped in sheets of waxed paper and looked like rolled slabs of Isigny butter. Reaching in with both hands, he lifted one out, set it heavily on his desk, let his fingertips trail over it. He was surprised how warm it felt, as though it were a living thing, its thick skin dented and scuffed and scarred. There were also various markings stamped on to its surface. An assay mark – 999.9/1000; a 24-carat brand; and the legend Banque Nationale d’Algérie.